A week ago, I wrote up The 2012 Season In Slow Home Runs, which was actually The 2012 Season In The Slowest Pitches Hit For Home Runs. That would’ve been a much more accurate but much worse title. That just begged for a follow-up, and that’s what this is, as we’re now going to examine the fastest pitches hit for home runs during the year. Originally I was going to say the timing feels right since nothing is happening in baseball, but then the Pirates signed Francisco Liriano and the Rangers signed A.J. Pierzynski, so instead I’ll say the timing feels right since nothing you care about is happening in baseball. This is a good time for frivolous reflection.

Once again, what the title suggests is that we’d be looking at the fastest home runs off the bat, and we might do that later. That would be possible on account of the incredible and invaluable ESPN Home Run Tracker. In the event that I write up that list, I don’t know what I’m going to title it since the obvious one’s already kind of taken. Thankfully this stuff is entirely unimportant and it doesn’t even need to be discussed out in the open on the front page of FanGraphs. You know how you can know I don’t have a regular editor? This paragraph is how you can know that.

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To date, it hasn’t been the offseason that the Texas Rangers wanted it to be. There’s still plenty of time, and the team still has plenty of talent, but the Rangers have been looking to make a move of significance. Later Thursday, they were able to make one, locking up free-agent catcher A.J. Pierzynski. And more, while Pierzynski is coming off arguably the best season of his entire big-league career, the Rangers got him for one year and $7.5 million. While Pierzynski doesn’t make the Rangers into something they weren’t by himself, he fills a need with so little risk the Rangers could hardly afford not to sign him.

With Geovany Soto and Eli Whiteside, the Rangers already had catchers, but they didn’t have good catchers, or left-handed-hitting catchers with a fair amount of power. While it’s presently unclear exactly how Pierzynski and Soto will split time, Pierzynski has exceeded 500 plate appearances in every season but one since 2003. In that one, he reached 497. Pierzynski has proven that he can handle an awful lot of work, and Soto just batted .198.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates have reportedly agreed to sign Francisco Liriano to a two year, $14 million contract. It’s an interesting deal, and we’ll talk about the specifics of Liriano and the Pirates in a second, but I first want to look at where this deal fits into an interesting off-season trend.

From a runs allowed perspective, Francisco Liriano was terrible last year. Just like he was the year before, too. By RA9-wins, Liriano has basically been a replacement level pitcher for the last two years, putting up an ERA- of 127 over that span. Of the 109 pitchers who have thrown 250 or more innings since the start of the 2011 season, Liriano’s ERA- ranks 104th. In terms of preventing runs, he’s been better than only Chris Volstad, J.A. Happ, Derek Lowe, Josh Tomlin, and Brian Duensing.

From a FIP perspective, though, Liriano has been a bit better. Not good, but better. We’ve got his WAR (based on walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed) over the last two years at +2.9, making him a below average — but not abysmal — starter. Liriano’s stuff and peripherals suggest that he should get better results going forward than he’s gotten in the past. And if his stuff and peripherals are right, then 2/14 for Liriano could easily be a bargain for the Pirates.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Three Very Recent Transactions
2. GIFs of Enthusiasm: Yoshi Tateyama’s Screwball
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Australian Baseball League

Three Very Recent Transactions
Tateyama Re-Signs with Texas
The Texas Rangers have re-signed right-handed reliever Yoshinori Tateyama to a minor-league contract, reports MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan. Over two major-league seasons, the soon-to-be 37-year-old Tateyama pitched 61.0 innings, posting this precise line: 23.7% K, 6.6% BB, 37.5% GB, 3.01 SIERA, 88 xFIP-, 0.2 WAR. Also, he throws a screwball ca. 6% of the time last season — an example of which spectacle one can see below.

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The Cubs agreed to terms with 29-year-old career swingman Carlos Villanueva on Wednesday. With Scott Baker’s early season availability in question as he rehabs from April Tommy John surgery, Villanueva should have a chance at making the club’s opening day rotation.

Villanueva showed promise in the rotation as myriad Blue Jays injuries opened a spot for him in Toronto. In his first 11 starts, spanning 65.1 innings, Villanueva held opponents to just a 3.03 ERA as he notched 65 strikeouts against 17 walks (3.8 K/BB). But questions about Villanueva as a starter lingered even in early September. Alex Anthopolous hardly gave his player a vote of confidence when asked about his starting chops on September 12th, according to John Lott of the National Post:

“I don’t want to use a term that’s derogatory to the player,” he said. “I don’t want to doubt him. But I have to also be objective and realistic too.”

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Value is an all-encompassing term comprised of performance relative to the position, league and readily available alternatives, as well as the price paid to acquire that production. It’s also fueled by the utility of the player to the team in how he is used. A team can maximize value by using a player according to his strengths while masking his faults. However, if a team perceives a player incorrectly, it runs the risk of minimizing his value.

This idea of maximizing strengths most often surfaces in the form of platoons. A lefty-crusher who struggles against righties won’t face same-handed pitchers much in a straight platoon. The idea of perceiving a player incorrectly and minimizing his value occurs when teams incorrectly view a platoon player as an everyday starter.

Which brings us to the free agent market, which still includes Cody Ross, Scott Hairston and Juan Rivera, three players best utilized as the lefty-crushing component of a platoon sandwich. Only Ross is viewed by many teams as an everyday starter — valid to an extent — and is seeking a contract commensurate with that view.

While he could certainly start for several teams, his value is largely connected to his production against lefties, who only throw about 25% of the innings in a season. He is a better overall player than Hairston and Rivera, averaging ~2 WAR over the last four seasons, yet he is 32 years old and is reportedly seeking a deal in the 3/$24 vicinity.

Given these factors, teams might find it more cost-effective to sign Hairston or Rivera for a strict platoon role. Assuming they are platooned with players that hit righties well, an interested team could eke out even more production.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below is the second set of 2013’s projections — for the AL West champion Oakland Athletics. Don’t hesitate to leave notes regarding format/presentation in the comments section, as the author frequently has no idea what he’s doing.

Batters
With his offseason acquisition of outfielder Chris Young (for Cliff Pennington and a minor leaguer), GM Billy Beane has created a good kind of the problem for the A’s: four of the team’s five best field players, per ZiPS — and four of the five team’s field players projected to record a WAR above 2.0 — are outfielders. Coco Crisp and Young both have positive career UZRs in center field; Reddick has the same in right. All three have pretty large sample sizes at their respective positions. Yoenis Cespedes has neither decent fielding numbers nor a sample that requires us to weight said numbers heavily. Still, based on the defensive reputations of all four players, it wouldn’t be shocking to see a lineup with Cespedes at DH and the other three playing the outfield.

Outside of that quadrumvirate — and newly signed Japanese shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima (about whom Jeff Sullivan recently made some shockingly intelligent comments) — ZiPS sees mostly pieces, but little impact.

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Ben and Sam discuss Edwin Jackson and the rest of the Cubs’ offseason signings and talk about how the specter of draft-pick compensation is affecting some free agents.

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As facts about Kendrys Morales go, here are a few of them. On Wednesday, Morales was traded from the Angels to the Mariners in exchange for Jason Vargas. Morales is and has always been a switch-hitter as a professional. Morales began switch-hitting when he was 12 years old, and the right side is his natural side. That is, Morales naturally bats right-handed, and he had to learn how to swing as a lefty. Every switch-hitter starts off with a natural side, but what’s interesting about the Morales case is this:

Career as a lefty: 127 wRC+
Career as a righty: 84 wRC+

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